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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Devils right wing Ilya Kovalchuk sounded unsure today if he will be ready to return from his right shoulder injury and play in Friday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators.

“We’ll see. I don’t know,” Kovalchuk said. “I just want to feel comfortable out there and do whatever I do best. I just don’t want to go in the lineup and take somebody’s place and just be out there because I want to be there. I’m not that kind of guy. If I’ll come back, I’ll play my 100 percent and try my best. I just don’t want to be a passenger to sit on the bench and get the best seat in the house.

“Physically I feel fine conditioning-wise, but I still got some discomfort to shoot the one-timer or something. That’s the weapon I use a lot in the game and if I’m not going to have it there’s no reason to go there.”

Kovalchuk attempted some one-timers during today’s practice.

“I did some one-timers,” he said. “First time in two and a half weeks, so it’s a positive thing.”

Whether it was good enough for Kovalchuk to play in a game Friday, he wasn’t ready to say.

“I’ll have another 20 hours, so we’ll see,” he said.

Although Devils coach Pete DeBoer said Tuesday that they’re not going to wait for Kovalchuk to be 100 percent to play him, Kovalchuk said he needs feel comfortable playing.

“That’s the same. That’s the most important thing,” he said. “You can have a little pain or a little discomfort. It doesn’t matter. You just have to go out there with the mindset you can do whatever you do best, not just to go out there to be the guy who’s screaming and yelling. ‘Come on! Let’s go guys!’ That’s not going to work.

“You just have to make sure if you step on the ice in a game situation, you’re in the best condition to do your best.”

With the Devils having lost all eight games since Kovalchuk was injured on March 23 (0-4-4) to fall four points out of a playoff spot with only eight games remaining, there is obviously urgency for him to get back in the lineup as soon as possible.

“It’s eight games left and we’re four points behind, so it’s not a situation where we want to be, but, like I said, I don’t want to go out there just because of that,” he said. “I want to go out there to help the team and if you’re going to take somebody’s spot who’s 100 percent healthy and motivated, to me it doesn’t make any sense.”

Kovalchuk also knows his shoulder has to be ready to take hits and play in physical battles.

“If you’re the other team, you try to make the guy who just came back (play) physical and (be) hard on him and it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I always play in those kind of situations, but, like I said, to me it’s most important to be ready to do my best, not just go out there and skate around. Anybody can get injured if he’s 200 percent healthy. It’s when you feel you can do your best, that’s when you go.”

Kovalchuk showed in practice the other day that he can score in a shootout right now.

“If they would call me from the box (team suite), I would change,” he said.

But DeBoer ruled out the idea of dressing Kovalchuk just to participate in the shootout.

“It’s not something we would consider,” DeBoer said.

In other words, if Kovalchuk isn't healthy enough to play in the game, he's not going to dress.

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.